


Afterlife

by toboldlywrite



Category: Carmilla - J. Sheridan Le Fanu
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, Temporary Character Death, actually don't, cemeteries are creepy, okay so there's not much shippy stuff sue me, references to past Laura/Carmilla
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-21
Updated: 2014-11-21
Packaged: 2018-02-26 11:19:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2650148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toboldlywrite/pseuds/toboldlywrite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura receives a rude awakening, right when she least expects it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Afterlife

Her pillows smell like death. Some grandchild – her eyes are weak, she can’t tell which one – clasps at her papery hand. “We love you,” the child says, her voice trembling.  “Never forget, Grandmother,” she continues emphatically, “we all love you.”

Laura pats the girl’s arm with one hand (just that small motion makes her ache up to her shoulder) and looks around at her assembled family, her children and grandchildren, all huddled around her bed. She imagines some of them are blinking back tears.  She doesn’t know for sure. They’re all fuzzy, out of focus…

And someone else is here.

Behind little Elsie (or is it Mary Ann?), in the doorframe, is a slim black figure.  A chill runs down Laura’s spine, and goosebumps prickle on her arms for the first time in years.  Surely she’s imagining the woman’s face, the face that haunted her dreams even when she was a child. She can barely see past her own nose nowadays.  She couldn’t possibly _see_ this woman. Not really.

“Carmilla?” Laura murmurs.

***

She wakes up.

For one hazy second, she’s sure this must be hell, or at least purgatory.  Darkness and silence seemed like hell to her even in life –

- _life._ Her chest heaves, she sucks in a rattling breath, and she knows somehow that she’s _alive._ But where is she? Her hands fly up and hit something heavy – _a coffin lid_ , she thinks distractedly, wildly.

Out.  She has to get out.  She’s gasping for breath now, and her heartbeat fills her ears as she kicks at the coffin lid. The whole coffin vibrates. Her teeth are practically shaking in her skull, but she _won’t_ be buried alive, she _won’t_ –

The coffin lid slides to the right and falls with a resounding clang.

Laura stares up at a stone ceiling, suddenly unable to move.  She shouldn’t have been able to do that.  Even when she was young, she never had the strength to lift anything so heavy as a _coffin lid._

After a moment or several, she slowly sits up. Her breaths are shallow now, and she has to grip the sides of the coffin to help herself out. She glances down at her hand – but no, it’s not her hand.  It can’t be. _Her_ hand was old and wrinkled and useless, not long-fingered and smooth and…

Young.

“Oh, no,” Laura whispers.  Her voice sounds alien to her ears, as if she were hearing it through a long tunnel.  “Oh, _no._ ”

She clambers out of the coffin. From what she can see (and it’s amazing that she can _see_ anything, given that this place is beyond dim), she’s in a stone-walled room. Her family’s mausoleum. Which means that the door should be right over here…  With a grunt, she shoulders open the doors, wincing as the chain meant to hold them closed snaps. She runs faster than she ever has, her bare feet hitting marble steps and then cold, damp grass as she dodges gravestones left and right.  Before, she always tiptoed through graveyards.  She apologized every few feet, sure she was stepping on some poor old bag of bones who just wanted to rot in peace.  This time, though, she doesn’t care.  Her heart is pounding, every leaf on every tree is clear and sharp as the jagged edge on broken glass, and all she wants right now is to see herself. She needs to know. She needs to be sure.

She’s running so fast that she almost falls into the little pond that occupies the corner of this particular cemetery. Once she regains her balance, she drops to her knees at the edge of the pond, leaning on her hands. The moon is almost full tonight, so she can see her reflection glowing silver in the gently rippling water.

Except she still can’t believe that face is hers. It _was_ hers, once upon a time, but she shouldn’t look that young, that sleek, that _beautiful_. Not anymore.  She reaches up to stroke her own cheek and shudders.

“Do you like it?”

The voice is behind her.  Laura screams and tries to scramble to her feet, but her hand slips and she falls, splashing in the shallow water.  She rolls over instead, shaking some of the water from the sleeve of her dress, and stares at the impossibly tall woman standing before her.

She knows who this is.

“I’ve been waiting for you to wake up,” the woman – Carmilla’s mother, or something – continues, a faint smile tugging at her lips.  “You certainly took your precious time.” 

“You – you knew I wasn’t dead?” Laura replies after a second, between gasping breaths.  She doesn’t know what has her more shocked – the woman’s cavalier tone of voice or the niggling feeling that maybe Laura herself knew, deep down, that this would happen.

The woman smiles faintly.  “I was fairly sure, yes.  Carmilla had been with you long enough, after all.”

Laura’s breath catches in her throat at that name. “What about – is she –“ She can’t quite bring herself to complete that sentence.

The woman shakes her head.  “Dead,” she answers, with more than a tinge of bitterness. “Your father and his friend were very thorough with her.”

“Oh,” is all Laura can say.  She suddenly feels as if she’s lost Carmilla all over again.

“Which is why I’ve sought you out,” the woman continues briskly.  “My name is Vilma. Though I was not Carmilla’s biological mother, I was her friend and traveling companion.  I thought you might like to step into Carmilla’s shoes.” 

It takes Laura a second to comprehend what Vilma is asking.  “You mean…” she begins hesitantly.  “You want me to do what Carmilla did?”

Vilma shrugs.  “You’re a vampire now, my dear girl.  You have to eat somehow.  And if you come with me, you won’t be alone.”  She pauses, as if letting the words sink in, before adding, “Bertha is with us.”

_Bertha…_ Laura vaguely remembers a conversation with her father, years and years ago, before Carmilla even came to her. _Mademoiselle Rheinfeldt is dead,_ he had said with an almost affected melancholy – or maybe he had said _the poor young lady is dead_ (Laura couldn’t remember) _._ She had suffered from the same strange affliction that almost killed Laura before her time – incipient vampirism, apparently.

But she didn’t die from it.  And neither did Laura.

Vilma is watching her expectantly, the look on her face not quite a smile.  Laura feels as if a single tendril of hope has taken root in her chest. She had been so terribly excited to meet Bertha, all those years ago.  She’d hoped they would become the best of friends ( _and, perhaps,_ she finally admits to herself, _even more than that_ ). 

“I guess I’ll come with you, then,” Laura says quietly as she stands up.  A faint, chilly breeze whistles through the cemetery, threading through her hair, and she smiles. 

She’s never felt so alive.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this as an epilogue to my English capstone project, a critical edition of Carmilla.


End file.
